What is the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research?

VICTR is Vanderbilt’s virtual home for clinical and translational research. Supported by the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Office of Research and the NIH sponsored Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), the mission of the institute is to transform the way ideas and research discoveries make their way from origin to patient care.

This is accomplished using a multi-faceted approach: through collaboration with a wide variety of research partners; by training, nurturing and rewarding participating researchers; by funding research; by developing new and innovative ways to involve the community in research; by developing new informatics and biostatistical systems; and by making available the latest technologies and sound research results affecting patient care.

VICTR functions to help researchers and clinicians do their jobs better by providing tools and support to improve the quality of research, publications, grant writing, and training for future doctors and researchers.

What are the Clinical and Translational Science Awards?

Vanderbilt was chosen in 2007 to receive one of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA). Through these awards, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), supports a national consortium of medical research institutions working together to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the country.

Each CTSA is led by a principal investigator, an established clinician scientist, who has the primary responsibility to define objectives and approaches of the CTSA and to oversee the CTSA at a local level as well as collaborate with the national CTSA consortium.Vanderbilt’s CTSA principal investigator, program director, and VICTR director is Gordon R. Bernard, M.D.

A major goal of VICTR is to remove roadblocks to translational science (i.e. moving scientific discoveries from bench to bedside). VICTR functions to help researchers and clinicians do their jobs better by providing tools and support to improve the quality of research, publications, grant writing, and training for future doctors and researchers.